Hello JGO - I just opened up public beta for my new multiplayer shmup Android Game called ErnCon. Please give it a try!

Public beta is open for USA, Canada, and most of Europe (slowly adding all of Europe - please be patient!). Android 2.2 or higher, hardware OpenGL, and a network connection (WiFi/3G/4G) is required. I hope you guys enjoy it!

I'm still in the planning stages for South American support. Right now I'm limited to deploying servers over Amazon EC2 and the only South American data center is in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I could open up to South American countries but I'm unsure of your network performance going to Sao Paulo. I'm trying not to overpromise to gamers

I just tried it on my HTC Desire S. I Completed the tutorial (or at least the first level of it, don't know if there's more?) and then the game seems to hang at the loading screen. The animation and music continue, but other than that nothing seems to happen. I'm from the Netherlands.

EDIT: oh, lol, when I pressed my phone's back button I got into the mission menu and everything seems to work again

Thanks for the reply - what happens after the tutorial is that I try to launch the store to show you the weapons/robots/fighters you can buy. I think the call to grab the store inventory is failing sometimes and I'm handling the error poorly. I will fix that for the next release.

I just tried it on my HTC Desire S. I Completed the tutorial (or at least the first level of it, don't know if there's more?) and then the game seems to hang at the loading screen. The animation and music continue, but other than that nothing seems to happen. I'm from the Netherlands.

EDIT: oh, lol, when I pressed my phone's back button I got into the mission menu and everything seems to work again

The above article only describes the networking layer so I still had to come up with things like client-side interpolation to mask lag, serializing/deserializing game objects to/from the network stream, etc.

Quote

Must have been a royal pain to work that out. Well done getting it to run in a polished game.

Thanks! I actually implemented this in FRG multiplayer about a year ago so I wasn't starting from scratch for ErnCon. The effort I put into FRG multiplayer was still almost a year of my spare time but it was really fun and interesting!

If you have any specific questions about ErnCon's networking model, please ask! I'm always up for knowledge sharing.

"Insufficient space on device" when I tried to download it. I'll try it again if I can clear enough internal memory (>20meg).

Obviously that's my problem not yours, but I'm just wondering whether you're setting "preferExternal" in the Android manifest. I've got more than enough external storage to hold the game. I don't know anything about how Android works, but I'm a little surprised that it's insisting on downloading the app to internal storage.

"Insufficient space on device" when I tried to download it. I'll try it again if I can clear enough internal memory (>20meg).

Yes I'm setting preferExternal. On my Nexus S, I noticed the phone started constantly complaining about Insufficient Space when I had less than 100MB free. While developing and installing/uninstalling repeatedly I think the free space becomes fragmented somehow. A reboot of the phone tends to fix that issue for me. I'm not sure if the same is happening to you.

The above article only describes the networking layer so I still had to come up with things like client-side interpolation to mask lag, serializing/deserializing game objects to/from the network stream, etc.

Quote

Must have been a royal pain to work that out. Well done getting it to run in a polished game.

Thanks! I actually implemented this in FRG multiplayer about a year ago so I wasn't starting from scratch for ErnCon. The effort I put into FRG multiplayer was still almost a year of my spare time but it was really fun and interesting!

If you have any specific questions about ErnCon's networking model, please ask! I'm always up for knowledge sharing.